Melissa Fisher, a cultural anthropologist, is a Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge and a Distinguished Principal Research Fellow at the Conference Board. She is also an Adjunct Professor in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Melissa’s expertise lies in organizational studies, with a focus on globalization, socio-cultural practices, technology, and work. Her first book, a co-edited volume, Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy explored how cultural practices and social relations were altered by radical economic and technological innovations during the turn of the new millennium. Wall Street Women her second book, examines the first generation of women in finance and the making of market feminisms (1956-2010). Her latest book is on the future of work and the workplace in the age of pandemics and social movements. It is part of a group project on global foresight based out of Stockholm University’s Department of Anthropology.

Melissa has given hundreds of key notes and talks nationally and internationally. Her Wall Street women book received over 25 reviews in academic journals. In addition, her research has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, CNBC, NPR, and the BBC. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Bloomberg and Bill Moyer’s Group Think. She appeared in the 2014 PBS documentary Makers: Women in Business. She also played an advisory role in the first female financial thriller film, Equity, a 2016 Sony Classic Pictures release.

Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, Melissa was the Laurits Andersen Professor in Business and Organizational Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She has also been a faculty member in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU and the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown University. She serves on the Women’s Leadership Council at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference. She is the Co-Chair of the Women’s 20 (W20) Entrepreneurial Task Force on Covid-19. The W20 advises the G20 on gender issues.

Melissa earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Anthropology at Columbia University and her B.A. in English at Barnard College.